


Come Slowly, Eden

by PasdeChameau



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, And the majority of the fic is just Goodsir and Fitzjames being bros, But mostly fluff, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon Fix-It, Probably period-typical sexism and homophobia too but not explicitly, References to period-typical racism, Tagging these relationships even though they're mostly offscreen, angsty fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 21:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18535588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PasdeChameau/pseuds/PasdeChameau
Summary: A visit to an old friend, and a new one.





	Come Slowly, Eden

_Dear Dr. Goodsir,_

_How long it’s been! As I have most shamefully neglected to write to you in the year or more since last you were in London, I shall not attempt to divert you with any niceties now, but rather come straight to my point, which is this: I was taken ill last winter, and being troubled in the chest for some weeks afterward, my doctor has advised me to remove from the city and its vapors. I find, though, I cannot stomach the thought of retiring to Bath, nor any place so well-stocked with good wishers, and I flatter myself you found some trifling amusement in our scientific discourse (say rather my doltish questions and your patient instruction) back on Erebus. Even so, I should not prevail upon your hospitality, were I not certain that Francis would otherwise bring me to Whitehill bodily and pound upon your door until you agreed to take me in—as, indeed, he has threatened so to do. Might I then beg leave to visit you? Or, if that be too great an imposition, to take up lodgings in some likely bush or shrub your way, and so satisfy this taskmaster’s insistence that I “take the air”?_   
  
_Yours with gratitude,_   
  
_Jas. Fitzjames_

 

_Dear Sir,_

_You would of course be most welcome at any time you so choose, though I fear you will find the company but middling. Also, I must tell you that I am at present joined by a mutual acquaintance—whose reacquaintance with yourself, however, I should most like to be the agent of. I hope too that Captain and Mrs. Crozier might accompany you, for I find myself anxious, now I am settled here, for proof positive that you, and he, and indeed all those (though too few) who returned to England are as well as can be._   
  
_Yours respectfully,_   
  
_Harry Goodsir_   
  


* * *

  
  
The reference to Francis and Sophia had troubled James, and thoughts of it continued to pluck at his nerves as he sat on a train rattling towards Edinburgh. It had been, as James himself had noted, at least a year since he had spoken to Goodsir, but a measure of camaraderie had marked their interactions on _Erebus_ —enough, at least, for James to feel certain that the man was no fool, and to wonder now what he might have heard, or guessed, or known.  
  
Francis, however, was in Bainbridge being anointed godfather to some new and distant relation (“A stiffer trial than knighthood,” he’d grumbled to James and then—gentler, and all the more startling for it—“though perhaps the greater honor”), and James couldn’t play escort to Sophia at a private dinner party, much less take her all the way to Scotland with no husband at her side. And though Sophia had sulked to be left alone, and though the journey itself sorely lacked for company, James was forced to admit that Goodsir would sniff out their secrets in a minute, were Francis, or Sophia, or both in tow.  
  
 _Sophia’s fingers splayed upon his hip, Francis’s mouth, hot and wet, at the hollow of his back. A world apart, not twenty feet above the bustle and traffic of a London morning._  
  
James crossed and recrossed his legs. Looked out the carriage window, to where the clouds were nestling soft into the horizon.  
  
  
  
It was an unseasonably fine day, and James walked the mile and a half from town to cottage, ambling through sun-soaked fields. The house itself, when he saw it, seemed more fit for a parson than a surgeon, with trim little windows opened pertly to the sky and a trellis winding its way around and atop the door. As he drew nearer, he saw that the sticky willow had been left to run wild through the roses. Smiling, he knocked.  
  
Goodsir was at the door almost the moment James’s knuckles left it, and for a moment he meant to harangue the man for undue solicitude. But Goodsir’s manner, though edged as always with a hint of nervousness, smacked less of professional concern than of eagerness; Goodsir had, perhaps, felt the isolation of his pastoral retreat more keenly than his letter had let on.  
  
“I’m very pleased to see you, sir,” he exclaimed, drawing James inside. “I hope you’ll forgive the state of the house; we had little time to set things in order, though you truly are most welcome—”  
  
“Just ‘James' will do, thank you,” James interrupted distractedly. “‘We,’ did you say? Oh, yes, you’d mentioned you had company, I apologize again for the intrusion—”  
  
“Oh, well, no—it’s…not exactly like that, s—I mean, James. I—well, perhaps you’d better see, though you may be somewhat surprised.” He gestured towards the corridor behind him, an embarrassed flush rising in his cheeks. Now curious, James followed Goodsir down the hall into a small but tidy sitting room, blooming white and gold in the brilliant afternoon rays.  
  
And there, curled on a settee with pen and paper in hand, was the Lady Silence herself.   
  
She was dressed in men’s clothing—no doubt the feel was more familiar to her—but the trousers and shirt had been neatly nipped in at the waist and let out at the chest to cleave more closely to the lines of her figure, and she wore a woman’s shawl around her shoulders. Her hair was gathered in a single plait tied off with a green ribbon, and when she rose to greet him, James could see plainly that she was in an interesting state.  
  
Goodsir—as well as he might—dropped his gaze bashfully, and moved to take her hand.  
  
“You’ve met before, after a fashion, but the circumstances—” A glance at his and Silence’s conjoined hands seemed to steel him, and he continued. “In any case, I should like to introduce you to my wife. To Silna.”  
  
James just managed to dip his head in acknowledgment, still stunned, and ever more acutely aware of what he had once said so portentously of the woman—lady—and her people. _Covetous, treacherous, and cruel_. Now, he watched as Silence gestured oddly, a trill of fingers through the air, and leaned close to kiss her husband on the cheek. Goodsir’s response came soft and quick in Inuktitut, and then the lady left them alone, the hand she’d laid on her husband’s shoulder clinging even as she turned to go. Covetous, indeed.  
  
“It’s difficult for her to speak,” Goodsir began then, levelly, as though no other explanations might be owing. “She, ah—lost most of her tongue, you may recall.”  
  
In truth, James had not, but he felt a surge of gratitude for Goodsir’s delicacy in prompting memories of so hideous a night. He clapped a hand to the man’s arm. “She looks well otherwise.”  
  
Goodsir blushed once again. “Yes. Well—well, she is learning to write, you perceive, but the hand signals are faster betwixt us two, and it is…usually us two only. The weather is so very fine today, though, she thought we all might make a picnic of supper. But if you’re tired from the journey, and would prefer solitude—” He cast an anxious glance towards the hallway Silence had vanished into.   
  
The gesture—the sudden guardedness of Goodsir’s whole manner—was mortifying to bear witness to, and James wondered for the first time what the townsfolk knew of the good doctor’s marriage, and what cruelties they might have let slip on the subject, even to the man himself. It was not the recompense Goodsir deserved, either for past sufferings or past kindnesses, but it was a tender James understood too well, and could seek to make amends for. “A charming notion. Just show me were I may place my things, and I am at your disposal—and, of course, Mrs. Goodsir’s.”  
  
Goodsir beamed.  
  
  
  
The time passed easily in the Goodsirs’ company, slipping away on a gentle breeze that turned chill as evening fell. It seemed only minutes had passed when James was roused from his reverie to find himself once again indoors, a fire snapping its warm fingers to cheerful time in the grate, and Mrs. Goodsir retired for the evening.  
  
(“She likes you,” Goodsir would assure him later. “It isn’t that. It’s her—she tires easily at the moment, is all.” Then, mischievous, James would ask when the addition was expected, and smile   
as Goodsir, wide-eyed, stammered his response. “What? Oh. Oh, seven or eight weeks, I should think.”)   
  
“She was exiled, you see,” Goodsir now said suddenly, and took a clumsy, darting sip of brandy; he had evidently lost the habit of company and cigars, if he ever had it to begin with.  
  
At James’s murmur of acknowledgment, he continued. “I don’t know—don’t understand all the reasons for it. Perhaps I can’t grasp it, in its entirety. But what happened to it, to Tuunbaq—it was a kind of dereliction, in their eyes. So she left, alone, and followed us south to Fort Resolution.”  
  
Followed Goodsir, and Goodsir alone, was what he meant, but was too charitable to say. And yet it was blazoned in the feat itself, for what but desperate love could have compelled her—a young woman, and a native of those parts, who might have lived comfortably enough on her own resources—to make such a reckless, grueling journey? James groped for a response. “She did not find us, though.”  
  
“She missed us by a matter of a week or so, actually.” Goodsir’s voice trembled with something—pride, perhaps. He cleared his throat. “It, ah, took her considerably longer to find a way to follow on from there, though. She might not have managed it at all, only one of the company men took a liking to her. Not—not in _that_ manner. An elderly man with three daughters of his own, thank God. He—well, she would not understand the dangers for a woman traveling alone, but she liked him well enough to allow him to persuade her regardless. He knew a man, half Netsilik—a whaler. Arranged for him to claim her as his sister and take her to England when next he sailed, if she truly would not be put off going.”  
  
The faint call of a memory, winged and warm and salty-bright. Francis’s discreet, upholding hand beneath James’s thin elbow as he first clambered up onto the deck of the ship that would carry them home. It was strange to think that what for him would have been a matter of course if it hadn’t felt so very much like deliverance had, for this woman, been the most perilous leg of all the journey. “And so you married her.”  
  
“In a manner of speaking. It didn’t seem proper, leading her through a ceremony she would neither understand nor give credence to.” Goodsir scrubbed a hand across his brow. “No, that’s not right. Or not wholly right, at any rate. I—I wasn’t certain it would be proper for me to set foot in a church. Not now. But we’ve exchanged vows and rings, and I don’t intend to part with her.” A fierceness stiffened these last few words, for all the world as though he believed Fitzjames intended to separate them. James let it pass.  
  
“And you? You still reside with Captain and Mrs. Crozier?”  
  
And there it was—the question that had so vexed James on his journey here. Gallingly, he felt himself flush, no longer so deft of foot as he once was in sidestepping social embarrassments. It was a dance he had allowed himself to forget, these last few months and years, but he regretted his gaucheness bitterly now. “I do, though I confess that weak health and ill moods make me but an indifferent guest. Were Francis Catholic I’d suspect he keeps me on as penance. Perhaps Soph—Mrs. Crozier sees in me a likely charitable project.”  
  
Goodsir’s smile was mild, but barbed in James’s eyes; he would certainly have noticed the slip. “I suspect not.”  
  
“Look here,” James began, and how lucky he was that even offense had its forms and courtesies, because his hand was trembling on his glass. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting—”  
  
But Goodsir merely reached over, gently, and stilled the shaking of his hand, guiding the glass safely back to the table. “Nothing. It’s no matter.”  
  
James narrowed his gaze. Under such close watch, Goodsir fidgeted, twisting his hands awkwardly in his lap. “It’s not—may I speak plainly? Whatever keeps you at the Croziers’, it’s yours to tell me, or not tell me, as you will. I would not be loose with another man’s secrets, and I do not judge.” A small laugh, helpless but clear, escaped him. “Why do you think I’m here?”   
  
He waved a hand towards the windows. The curtains were drawn now, but the light of the full moon was streaming through the delicate fabric and setting it aglow, silver catching on the lace like dew amongst the boughs of a tree. An owl hooted once in the distance, content with the day’s work.  James sank back into the softness of his chair. “I rather thought to escape the constant clamoring for your discourse on variants in form and behavior amongst a colony of _ursus maritimus_.”  
  
Goodsir’s lips twitched. “Well, that is of course a benefit. But no, I—I could never take Silna to London, to have her gawped and gaped at, or thought of as—as my mistress, an exotic plaything I picked up like a shell on a beach. The people there—they wouldn’t understand the life we lead.”  
  
Goodsir’s gaze had strayed to the fire as he spoke, the light of the flames cutting strange and mournful lines into his face. Once again, James’s thoughts strayed to Whitehill’s residents and then beyond—to London, where Sophia would just now be shaking the pins from her pale curls like a dog tossing water off its coat, and to Bainbridge, where Francis was perhaps dandling a second cousin once removed upon his knee. At last, James found his voice. “Some would, I think,” he murmured, then raised his glass in toast.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a nagging feeling I handwaved a lot of historical accuracy for this fic (like, besides the obvious). For instance, while I think passengers were able to get to Edinburgh from London by train by the early 1850s (and from there to surrounding areas by some combination of train/coach/foot), I can’t say I researched it extensively; I once had to write a deeply boring lesson plan about patterns of railway construction over the course of the 19th century, and I’m still recovering. That said, if you spot any glaring errors let me know, because I'm both deeply lazy and a perfectionist.
> 
> (That said, the one mistake I'm absolutely going to own as deliberate is Goodsir referring to Crozier as "Captain" rather than as "Sir," despite the implication that he's been knighted. It really just stems from me writing things out of order, but upon editing, I had a lot of thoughts about why the slip was actually superbly in character and left it in, because I love discovering that I've been accidentally profound.)
> 
> Speaking of Goodsir's letter, though: epistolary writing is—shall we say—not my favorite thing, but it was necessary to set up the rest of the story. Hopefully it wasn't as painful to read as it was to write.
> 
> Title taken from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name.


End file.
